[davidw]

My .02 cents and is limited to my view on the matter. I agree with Nexia (don't give me a hard time people :P) on the proper extension - however, I look at things to a different degree. For example, my site is .org, and I use .org, however, I also have .com, .net, .us (I think), but they all redirect to .org - I use the extension for the reason that it is an org, not .com, etc., however, I also use the others (with redirects) for the purpose that other people won't take the name and smear it. Meaning if I give out my business card and they see my domain, but mistakenly put .com, they won't be going to some adult site or warez site.

On the hyphenated domain, I can't really say either way because I used to have a hyphenated domain and saw virtually no traffic to it. When using google, I had to be very specific to pull up anything on that domain. Due to the fact that the site was only up for a couple years, I can't say there was enough time to know for sure.

If searching for "apple tree" it would be best to have that in the meta tag(s) in multiple variations of how one might spell that while still being relevant.
Such as
apple, tree, apple tree, appletree, appel, tre